The Networked iPDC

United by the Ethics of Care for the Earth, Care of People, Care of the Future

Welcome to the networked Integral PermaCulture Design Certificate community

Why Permaculture?

"What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet. We don't know what details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturists are one of the critical gangs that are doing that."

Dr David Suzuki geneticist, broadcaster and international environmental advocate

Integral Permaculture

Integral Permaculture offers radical and doable solutions for a Planet in Crisis.

Starting by questioning the basis of current civilization, we support each other to re-design our lives, families, food systems, education, economy, mythology, community & society, thinking globally, acting locally.

This modernized permaculture curriculum openly integrates a large & diverse number of Inspirers: teachers, leaders, activists, thinkers ... including the most innovative pioneers we know from a wider range of movements, taking from each only what is coherent for a truly holistic practical science serving the ethics of:

Integrity is what we aim for, by updating this curriculum continuously in an ongoing international dialogue amongst all practitioners who wish to cooperate in this collective effort.

The PDC

The Permaculture Design Certificate Course is an internationally-recognized 72 hour course resulting in a Permaculture Design Certificate, or PDC.

For the un-initiated, it is a most basic & important course in how Life designs on this Planet, which should be taught everywhere in kindergarden but is in fact ignored up to post-graduate level, in western cultures.

Which is why we're in such a big mess propping up a civilization that is destroying vital ecosystems, changing the climate, our economic system is collapsing... and why most people simply don't understand why or how we got onto this suicidal path, & how it's really not that complicated to reverse.

The course includes the application of permaculture ethics, directives & principles to education, our cultural & work focus, food production, home design & construction, energy conservation & generation as well as exploring the alternative economic & legal structures to enable the necessary changes.

Added Advantages

This iPDC has added advantages to the regular PDCs, apart from the great flexibility of ways you can do it through:

1)It is taught as part of an international network which delivers a unique incremental permaculture curriculum which is modernized & constantly updated, starting with important people-care, eco-economics and design techniques additions to the required basic PDC curriculum.

We can do this because we focus more on the essential models & tools during the course, as the course comes with a supportive ongoing study group (& includes the great resource that is the Integral Permaculture Designers Manual, online) for you to delve deeper into anything you need to know more about, at any time, as well as having access to a wide set of case studies from all over the world.

2)During the course you will start to compile a design portfolio which you can take to diploma level, if you wish to become a permaculture practitioner or activist with the help of ongoing professional support, afterwards. A smooth pathway to more advanced courses is built into our organization (we are working right now on offering graduate and post-graduate levels in the future), and you will start the course by observing the ongoing designs & projects of more advanced students & then starting your own design portfolio.

3)A basic Digital Democracy for Designers classis included during the preparation phase of the course, which also includes a tour of how we help each other with our action-learning & project management by sharing our design portfolios online. This will provide you with all the tools to enable you to easily communicate with anyone in our network before, during and after the iPDC event, as well as serving as an online introduction to your new larger (international)group course companions.

4) There's a unique 2 months of online mentorship after obtaining your Certificate, and you can negotiate an internship or continued stay of any kind that would be of mutual benefit with any of the projects in the network. You stay on as a member of the network for as long as you wish and can earn Permis for mentoring other students (which you can exchange for more advanced courses).

5) And we can keep the groups small (in order to give you more personal attention) as well as the costs so low because we don't have to cover unecessary travel costs or need to do unnecessary repetitive work: the classes are recorded and the mentorship is online, with the same very experienced tutors you see in the classes.

So the tutors can focus on answering your questions & helping you apply the course to real life, whilst our local facilitators (mostly diploma students with the Academy) focus on supporting you in other ways (like providing personal mentoring, explaining how they apply permaculture in the projects they are coordinating, organizing physical activities & small workshops on particular topics you're interested in, etc.).

Graduation

Certification from this course empowers you to develop a professional permaculture project, like contributing to a community project or transition initiative, starting an eco-business or in some other way adding coherence to your life as a member of a dynamic network of people designing for Change.

As a PDC graduate, you will be a member of an exceptional international community of permaculture activists and practitioners.

As a graduate you will also be eligible to attend the stimulating regional and international permaculture conferences and expand your network of friends and permaculture activists from around the world.

The PDC is also the first step towards the Permaculture Diploma, which is a practice-based & mentored way of learning to apply permaculture at increasingly deeper levels, as well as a way of building and consolidating the international permaculture network, showcasing your practical work or that of others and giving and receiving support for this important work.

CooperativeTransmedia

TransMedia is something corporations are busy perfecting in order to distract us with more appealing virtual reality (mostly) ... but we are hacking these technologies to make changing the real world more compelling, and realistic for most ordinary people.

A New Adventure

This Networked iPDC is an evolved version of the integral permaculture Study Circles network, which has been working since 2009 now (in a way it was the pilot project for this) but we always listen to what people want and it seems there was a demand for more PDC locally, so ... here they are!

We love how the emergent network has served us as permaculture projects to support each other, through the Academy's courses and existing structures, including the Study Circles experiments, so we are looking forward to extend this vital support network for Change Agents to more sites & many more people.

And we're preparing for an even larger bioregional design to be a focus for the first iPDC in the US sometime next year, facilitated by our colleague Glenn Gall: the GreatLakesDesign (group in FB just started)

About the Network

This is an innovative education offer from an international action learning network (a real living university for sustainability) which developed thanks to the development of a complementary currency, the Permis, which make the courses of the Integral Permaculture Academy a lot more affordable for those who cooperate in the multiple educational projects that it works in.

These new courses are innovative also in other ways, but in terms of teaching standard they are unique in introducing an iterative form which will guarantee that the quality of the classes (already of the highest level) will keep improving with the participation of the whole network, constantly.

One of the results of the decision to focus, as an Academy, on the online courses during the last 6 years, has been (amongst other very fruitful surprises) the creation of a stimulating international community of permaculture colleagues with very good close relationships, who actively enjoy supporting each other.

Starting with this base, the network opens itself to new projects & members during 2015.

Our Journey

to this Network, in Pictures

You may not know that this Integral Permaculture Academy came about primarily as an excercise in designing for better collective intelligence. First, in 2004, by designing a more complete PDC action-learning curriculum (the colours in our paw icon represent the 5 modules)

In 2005 we held a workshop on Chaordic Organizations at IPC7 in Croacia (International Permaculture Convergence) in order to encourage us to design our PC networks a lot more consciously. We proposed a Chaordic Permaculture Institute but it was too early as most people said 'what's chaordic'?

Then in 2008 we presented a follow-up workshop at IPC8 in Brazil where (from convergence report): "Stella consistently opened the door wider and wider into the world of Chaordic systems and the possibility for evolving from the confusion of current organizational management and growth". This resulted in a pilot for a Chaordic PC Institute ...

... & later a "Version 4" for the Permaculture Diploma, in 2010, which is what we now offer as an Academy + so much more..

especially a world-wide cooperative of integral permaculture designers working together to learn to design the collective intelligence we need to really change society. Join us!